Monday, August 24, 2015

Recently, vis a vis the interwebs, I was found by a long lost friend from camp. This was kind of glorious, because I attended the one camp to rule them all. This would be dungeons and dragons camp. Greg enclosed a photo of my fellow campers and me:

Dungeons and Dragons Camp at Shippensburg U

We might look like we all just got bitch slapped by a school bus sign, but my homies could lay siege to a dining room table like nobody’s business. In microseconds, there’d be dungeon master screens, monster manuals, piles of dice, meticulously painted little paladins and gnomes and orcs, and everything covered with a thin layer of tostito crumbs.

My character was fucking tremendous. Her name was Morgan de la Conastar. She was a half human-half elven thief with the best magic item ever - a portable hole. This portable hole resembled an average black silk handkerchief. Except if you unfolded it and lay it on the ground, it would become a 3’ x 3’ empty hole. And then you could stick all your shit in the hole, fold up the hankie, put it in your pocket and continue your thievery unencumbered by the items you’d stolen previously.

If I played with a dungeon master who knew better, they made me have a neutral good alignment. If I played with a dungeon master who didn’t know better, I would go in with a chaotic neutral alignment. Then I would, eventually, kill all the members of my party and stick all their booty in my portable hole.

25 years later, I remember one time I was getting down with my chaotic self. I’m still pissed off about it. I waited until all my fellow player characters scrambled out onto this rope bridge spanning a steep and precarious canyon. I had a brilliant plan.

I said to the Dungeon Master, “Ok, now I cut the rope bridge. Everyone is in the middle, so they all should plunge to their deaths in the canyon. After the last of their wails subside, I’m going to scale the cliff wall (because I’m a thief and that’s our best skill) and I will pluck all the treasure from their lifeless bodies."

I recall my righteous upset when the DM refused to let me cut the bridge. WTF? I had been drooling over the one guy's +2 bejeweled dagger the whole damn night.

Saturday, August 01, 2015

After midnight, I was reading a Swedish article on my phone in bed. Tom tucked in beside me snoring lightly. Everything was all sugar plums, soft pillows and curtains-closed stillness.

I read a sentence about a “järv” — something like “the järv bit the guy on the ass.” I found this incredibly confusing because I always thought järv meant “bold." So while I supposed the sentence could mean “the bold guy bit the other guy on the ass” I suspected this was not the case. Luckily, there is google translate.

I clicked over and typed in “järv.”

Translation: “wolverine.”

Well one mystery cleared up, but another still afoot. I have described people as “järv” in conversations. I have heard people described as “järv” in conversations. And by god, I do not believe we were talking about wolverines.

It was then I noticed a little microphone in Google translate. Bingo, I thought. I will speak the word “järv” into the phone, very very quietly. The Google will translate my pronunciation. And I will know if I have been mistakenly calling people wolverines for years.

I clicked the microphone. And Siri shrieked “WOLVERINE” at top volume.

Tom popped out of bed like a horizontal mambo warrior at the ready for blood-letting and night time attacks. I got up and make him camomile tea but he still blamed me for an early morning full of unrequited heart palpitations.

End note: Apparently how you spell bold in swedish is djärv. But the ‘d' is silent. Unlike my telephone and Tom’s ongoing commentary about my telephone and remembering to turn down the volume at night.